What we have secured by the War, and what remains to be secured. 



DISCOURSE, 

Delivered on the 

DAY OF NATIONAL THANKSGIYING, 

DECEMBEK 7, 1865, 

IN THE 

SOUTH CHURCH, ANDOVER, 



BY 

REV. CHARLES SMITH, 

■H 
PASTOR. 



PRINTED BT REQUEST. 



ANDOVER : 

PRINTED BY WARREN F. DRAPER. 

18 6 6. 



i 



Cov 









DISCOURSE. 



O BLE83 OUE GOD, TE PEOPLE, AND MAKE THE VOICE OF HIi9 PRAISE TO BE HEARD; 
WHICH HOLDETH OUR BOUL IN LIFE, AND BUFFERETH NOT OUR FEET TO BE MOVED. 
FOR THOU, O GOD, HAST PROVED US: THOU HAST TRIED US AS SILVER IB TRIED. 
THOU BROUGHTEST US INTO THE NET : THOU LAIDST AFFLICTION UPON OUR LOINS. 
THOU HA8T CAUSED MEN TO RIDE OVER OUR HEADS; WE WENT THROUGH FIRE 
AND THROUGH WATER; BUT THOU BROUGHTEST US OUT INTO A WEALTHY PLACE. 
1 WILL GO INTO THY HOUSE WITH BURNT-OFFERINGS ; I WILL PAY THEE MY VOWS, 
WHICH MY LIPS HAVE UTTERED, AND MY MOUTH HATH SPOKEN WHEN I WAS IN 

TROUBLE.— Psalm Ixvi. 8-14. 

rilHIS Psalm was written bj some unknown Hebrew poet, to 
celebrate, probably, the return of the Israelites from exile 
and captivity in Babylon. The portion of it selected as the text 
of discourse, though written many hundred years ago, and re- 
ferring to the condition and trials of people long ago at rest, 
not inaptly describes the circumstances in which, as a people, 
we have been placed. God has " proved us," and " tried us 
as silver is tried," in the heated furnace of civil war. He 
" brought us into the net," when, under the lead of men who 
had held prominent places in the Government, rebellion was in- 
augurated with fearful celerity in eleven States of the Union, 
while prominent cabinet and military officers treacherously be- 
trayed their trust, and the Chief Magistrate pleaded a want of 
constitutional power to preserve the nation from dismemberment. 
He " caused men to ride over our heads," when our soldiers 
were defeated at Manassas, Bull Run, Ball's Bluff, on the 
Peninsula, and at Chancellorsville ; causing our enemies to talk 



^.r» V 



?,3l 



4 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

contemptuously of our valor, and foreign nations to treat us witli 
gross indignity. He "laid afflictions upon our loins" — most 
grievous and severe afflictions — when our young men fell by 
the thousand, on the battle-field, by sickness in the camp, and 
starvation in rebel prisons ; when conspiracies were formed in 
the loyal States, and the fear of national destruction took hold 
of the most hopeful. "We went through fire and through 
water," — through terrible and diverse trials, from foes without 
and foes within. But now we can say to God, with the Hebrew 
psalmist, " Thou hast brought us out into a wealthy place." 
These heavy trials of the past four years are over. We are at 
peace ; the integrity of our nation has been preserved ; and 
more, even, than this, we come out of our terrible ordeal a 
stronger nation, more compact, more homogeneous, vastly more 
respected and feared by foreign nations than ever before ; de- 
livered, also, of the body of death by which we had been heavily 
weighted from the beginning of our national existence. Our 
national energy has been stimidated, our material resources aug- 
mented. Though with a heavy debt upon us, the income of our 
treasury is more than equal to its wants. Our credit abroad is 
unimpaired, and never before had we, as a nation, such a fair 
prospect of national wealth and greatness. 

" Thou hast brought us out into a wealthy place." The 
President of the nation has not been unmindful of Him by whose 
resistless purpose and power we have received deliverance. 
Through his proclamation for a day of national thanksgiving and 
praise we have said : " We will go into thy house with thank- 
offerings ; we will pay thee the vows which our lips uttered and 
our mouth hath spoken when we were in trouble." Yes, in the 
ten thousand temples of worship throughout the land, we say to 
all the people of the land to-day : "Oh bless our God, ye peo- 
ple, and make the voice of his praise to be heard : which holdeth 
our soul in life, and suffereth not our feet to be moved," — which 



AND WHAT KEMAINS TO BE SECURED. 5 

preserve th our national life among the nations of the earth, and 
suflFereth not our national standing to be disturbed. 

This is a day of national thanksgiving and praise, — a day in 
which, pubUcly and in concert, our people shall heartily and 
gratefully acknowledge their indebtedness to Almighty God. 
Let us, by way of incitement to grateful praise, recall some of 
the benefits which, through the kindness of God, we have secured 
as a nation. 

First. We have secured an honorable peace. One year ago 
the Lieutenant-General of our mihtary forces, with his large army, 
was encamped before the fortifications of Richmond and Peters- 
burg, with the disheartening prospect of a dreary and profitless 
winter campaign. The rebels were as defiant as ever, and 
maintained their ground in their intrenched position around their 
capital with unflinching obstinacy. At home and abroad they 
proclaimed their determination to fight till their independence 
was conceded. Our army was melting away by disease con- 
tracted in the intrenchments, and by exhausting assaults upon 
almost impregnable fortifications. There was an earnest call for 
men to fill up the decimated ranks. We had already given many 
of our best young men to the terrible work and sacrifice. Some 
of these had fallen, some were languishing in rebel prisons. 
Recruiting was difficult. The first enthusiasm had spent itself. 
Grim war, ceasing to be a froHc, had become a dread reahty. 
We said men must be had : we must fight it through ; but our 
hearts were sad while our resolution was finn. We bade our 
yoimg men go forth to the contest, while in whispers we asked, 
" When shall the end be ? " We should not then have ventured 
to think that, in a little more than four months, Savannah, 
Charleston, and Richmond would be occupied by our troops ; 
that the two greatest generals of the Confederacy, with the two 
4argest armies, with all their ofiicers, would be prisoners of war 
on parole ; that, in less than eight mouths, not a Confederate 



6 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

soldier in arms would be found from the Potomac to the Rio 
Grande, from Carolina to Arkansas. Never was there before 
such a sudden and complete overthrow of a great and well-or- 
ganized military power, extending over such a vast territory. 
This almost instantaneous collapse of the great Slaveholders' 
Rebellion will always be a surprise in history. 

The war has been fought through. The rebels have been 
completely conquered. There is no question among them as to 
the thoroughness of their defeat. They have been placed en- 
tirely at the mercy of the Government against which four years 
ago they hurled defiance, anathemas, taunts, and ridicule. 
There has been no compromise with treason — no bridging the 
way back to allegiance by concession or promises of favor. The 
rebels have been beaten by hard blows, — fairly and terribly 
beaten, — thrust down to the earth, held down, till they cried for 
mercy, and were glad to receive their forfeited lives from the 
clemency of those they sought to destroy. The peace thus 
gained is likely to be a long one. No second rebelhon will the 
children or grandchildren of any person now living witness 
against the Government of these United States. Years before 
that fatal shot was fired on Sumter, we were in a state of war, 
— South against North, North against South. There was an 
" irrepressible conflict " between the two sections. This conflict 
has come to an end. We shall have more or less bluster and 
bravado at Washington ; but the haughty, self-asserting, brow- 
beating spirit of the olden time has been laid to rest forever. A 
Massachusetts senator will hereafter be at liberty to speak his 
mind on any subject in the senate-chamber at Washington, with 
no fear of a South Carolina bludgeon before his eyes. We have 
conquered an honorable peace, and a lasting peace. 

Again : We have secured the destruction of slavery in our 
country, and the consequent destruction of the institution in all • 
civilized countries at no distant day. By a most infelicitous, but 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 7 

perhaps necessary concession, the right to hold negroes and the 
descendants of negroes' in slavery was recognized in the Consti- 
tution of the United States. The framers of this instrument, 
who saw the inconsistency and incongruity of engrafting a system 
of slavery upon democratic mstitutions, hoped that through state 
legislation slavery would be gradually and within a Umited period 
abolished throughout the land. Their hopes were not realized. 
With the increased demand for cotton, and the invention of the 
cotton-gin, slave labor at the South became exceedingly profitable. 
The slaves increased in number. Planters, with the stimulus of 
large profits, pushed out into new territory. Slave States mul- 
tiphed. The South grew rich and proud through the labor of its 
bondmen and bondwomen. A haughty aristocracy grew up, 
which claimed to possess the courtesies and elegances of social 
hfe, and the arts of statesmanship and arms, to an eminent degree. 
Talent and religion became subservient to this aristocracy. The 
Bible was ransacked to find plausible reasons for the existence 
and continuance of slavery. The institution was pronounced by 
learned men to be " a divine institution," established from the 
days of Canaan. No thought was now entertained of its ultimate 
extinguishment. The rather it was to be fortified by new con- 
stitutional guaranties ; it was to be extended over territory al- 
ready sacredly dedicated to free labor; and, not content with 
this, the slave aristocracy unblushingly and offensively assumed 
an air of superiority on account of slave-holding over their non- 
slave-holding equals in ofiicial position. They claimed the right 
to dictate the policy of the National Government, and to desig- 
nate those who should be our presidents, ministers of state, and 
ambassadors ; and when seemingly about to lose this assumed 
right, they rebelled. Being blindly devoted to slavery, they 
determined to make it the comer-stone of a new nation, which 
they fancied they might easily establish, with only mercenary 
and cowardly Yankees to oppose them ; and that this new na- 



8 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

tion, with slavery for its chief corner-stone, would arise in majesty 
and splendor till its court should eclipse that of St. Peters- 
burg, of St. James, and even that of St. Cloud. 

" In dreams, through camp and court they bore 
iThe trophies of a conqueror." 

Four years of terrible war, in which the manly strength, pride, 
and beauty of the South have been laid in the grave, — four years 
of fastmg and nakedness, of devastation and havoc, — four years 
of struggle ending with defeat, humihation, poverty, and shame, 

— have destroyed this beautiful fabric of a dream. That comer- 
stone of the grandest empire of the future has been lifted from 
its place and broken into ten thousand fragments by plebeian 
hands. Abraham Lincoln, the Illinois lawyer, deridingly called 
the "rail-splitter," — ungainly in person, uncourtly in speech, 

— with the aid of Grant, Sherman, and their fellow-soldiers, 
took up this corner-stone of the imperial Southern Confederacy, 
which was destined to overshadow the earth, and ground it to 
powder. Slavery can never again exist in any form whatsoever 
on this North American Continent. True, it has at present 
some semblance of hfe in Kentucky ; but its life here is but the 
spasm of its death-struggle. Now, with the destruction of slavery 
in the United States, its doom in Cuba and Brazil cannot long be 
delayed. The moral influence of emancipation here will be felt 
in that Garden of the Ocean, on the banks of the Amazon, herald- 
ing the day of freedom to the poor bondmen toiling beneath a 
tropical sun. 

Again : We have secured the future indisputable supremacy 
of the National Government, and the consequent right to call 
ourselves an integral nation, rather than an assemblage of mde- 
pendent States. For years Southern statesmen have uniformly 
maintained the right of a State to secede from the Union ; though 
some of them may not have deemed the exercise of this right 
expedient. Some Northern statesmen and some Northern orators, 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 9 

as ]Mr. Phillips and his associates, have also loudly claimed the 
right of a State to secede. Hence, at the time of the secession 
of the Southern States, men at the South -who opj.osed secession 
with all their ability, when their State seceded, believing in the 
paramount authority of a State, renounced their allegiance to the 
United States, and Avent into rebellion with clear consciences. 
Hence Mr. Buchanan, timid and wavering, could find no author- 
ity in the Constitution to coerce a State. It seemed for a time 
as if we were about to tumble to pieces — roll apart, as wculd a 
pyramid of cannon balls were one from the lower strata knocked 
from its place. The anxious inquiries passed from lip to lip, 
" Have we a Government ? " " Have we been living in a delu- 
sion ? " " Are we really a nation, or only the shadow of a na- 
tion ? " The decision of these vital questions was taken from 
the senate chamber and the supreme court room, and given to 
the battle-field. Bomb-shells, cannon balls, and mini^ balls were 
the arguments used. The conclusion arrived at under this 
severely practical style of reasoning is, that we are a nation, one 
and inseparable ; that we have a Government that can and will 
defend its own existence to the last extremity, — that can and will 
crush rebellious States, however united they may be in their 
rebelUon, — that can and will punish treason with fire and sword, 
however sincere and honest the traitors may be. We take our 
place among the nations of the earth, having proved our right to 
be, and our ability to be. The doctrine of State Rights as 
opposed to the central Government has gone to oblivion Avith the 
rebellion. Henceforth we are to be known as the United People, 
as well as the United States, of America. Gov. Orr, of South 
Carohna, in his recent inaugural address to the legislature of 
that intensely secession State, says: "The war has decided, 
first. That one or more of the States" of the Federal Union 
have not the right, at will, to secede therefrom. The doctrine 
of Secession, which was held to be orthodox in the State Rights 



10 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

school of politics, is now exploded, for any practical purpose, 
^ihe theory of absolute sovereignty of a State of the Federal 
Union (from -whence was derived the right to secede), which 
was believed almost universally to be a sound constitutional 
construction, must also be materially modified to conform to 
this unposing decision. In all the powers granted in the Con- 
stitution to the Federal Government, it is supreme and sover- 
eign, and must be obeyed and respected accordingly. Where 
the rights of a State are disregarded, or unconstitutional acts 
done by any department of the Federal Government, redress can 
no bnger be sought by interposing the sovereignty of the State, 
either for nullification or secession ; but the remedy is by petition 
or remonstrance ; by reason, which sooner or later will overtake 
justice ; by an appeal to the supreme judicial power of the Union ; 
or by a revolution, which, if unsuccessful, is treason." 

Thanks be to God that, through the opening made by Sher- 
man and his brave soldiers, the true light on this subject shines 
even upon the capitol of South Carohna, the cradle of secession 
and treason. 

Again : We have secured, abroad and at home, confidence in 
the stability of our democratic institutions. Monarchists in 
Europe have been from the beginning of our national existence 
aflfirming the inherent weakness of democratic institutions, and 
predicting their overthrow in this country at the first serious trial 
of their strength. The wisest men in the convention that framed 
the Constitution — among them Hamilton and Adams, with 
Washington — feared there would not be strength enough in 
our institutions to stand the shock of sectional and partisan strife. 
Up to the year 1861 it was an open question whether our form 
of Government could be maintained — whether it had vitality 
enough to live — amidst internal upheaving and commotion. It 
was looked upon by thoughtful men as an experiment ; hopeful, 
indeed, still not beyond question as to its failure. But now, 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 11 

after four yaars of unparalleled trial, we present ourselves before 
the world with our institutions intact, unharmed. We have nei- 
ther fallen into anarchy, nor succumbed to a military despotism. 
We have neither come under the tyranny of the street mob, nor 
that of the " solitary man on horseback." The strength of our 
institutions has been tested by a rebellion of greater magnitude 
and fierceness, with greater intellectual and military resources, 
than any to which the governments of modern Europe have been 
subjected. Our young men have been taken from their homes 
and secular pursuits by the million to fill the ranks of our armies. 
We have submitted to the relentless conscription. We have 
been heavily taxed. We have practically said to the Govern- 
ment : " Do what you will with us and ours, only secure to us, 
and transmit unharmed to our children, the republican institu- 
tions we have inherited from our fathers, and this noble country 
in its integrity, from the Lakes to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific." 

In the hour of our victory the hand of the assassin took the 
life of our beloved Chief Magistrate, and laid low his Secretary 
of State. But, though every heart in the land trembled at the 
terrible news, as the soli 1 ground does under the shock of an 
earthquake, there was no trembling or quivering in the demo- 
cratic institutions of the state. The trusted head of the Gov- 
ernment through violence lay a corpse in the presidential man- 
sion ; but the Government itself continued " vital in every part." 
It moved on undisturbed in its functions, and its funds were 
depressed but the fraction of a cent on the dollar, and but for a 
day. 

Our democratic institutions have, then, been tried by fire, and 
have stood unharmed the test. We believe in them now as we 
never did before ; and the nations of the world, from Great 
Britain to Tunis, with surprise not unmingled with regret, con- 
template their stability, and are forced to the unpalatable conclu- 



12 AVHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

sion that they are as vigorous as thej are flexible, as permanent 
as they are popular, as firm as they are free. 

Again : We have secured the profound respect of foreign 
nations. There is nothing in this Avorld "which nations so much 
respect as power, wisely and successfully used. We have put 
down a rebellion such as Lord Palmerston, late Prime Minister 
of Great Britain, declared Great Britain would be unable to put 
down. We have done in four years what nearly every statesman 
in Europe said never could be done. In the face of prediction 
and pity we have shown our ability to manage our own affairs, 
and bring our troubles to a happy issue. The vastness of our 
military operations seems to have fairly confounded the wise men 
of the Old World. Sir Morton Peto, on his return from his visit 
of inspection to this country, tells his friends of Bristol that " he 
went to America at a most interesting epoch of its history — at 
the close of the most tremendous struggle known in modern times. 
He did expect to find exhaustion, and society somewhat disar- 
ranged ; but he saw nothing of the kind. (Cheers.) There was 
nothing throughout the whole of the great country that would 
have led him to suppose such a struggle had existed. To 
understand America," he said, " they should go there ; and no 
man of business, entering life, should consider his education 
complete until he had paid that country a visit. The war was 
from the very first a war of principle. The United States army 
was 1,200,000 strong; and General Grant had told him at St. 
Louis he had mustered out 875,000 men up to that day. He 
stated that he did not mean to have more than 50,000 men ; and 
if their friends of the South were sincere, they would bring the 
army down to 30,000. (Cheers.) If these men could go and 
be absorbed in civil hfe, it must show that the country possessed 
resources such as were never seen before, and which nations in 
Europe would do well to imitate. (Loud cheers.)" These men 
have gone and have been absorbed in civil life. Sir Morton 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO V,E SECURED. 13 

went on to say that " he had had the pleasure of meeting General 
M'CulIum, whoj had conducted the whole of the Commissariat 
Department, and who would be his guest next year, and he hoped 
to bring him to see the Bristol people. (Cheers.) He learned 
from the General, after going into the whole (juestion on the 
termination of that gi-eat struggle, that the North were working 
on their own account 2500 miles of railway, 887 engines, GOOO 
cars, 7000 employes in connection with these. (Loud applause.) 
Such a course of action had been instituted, that Avhen General 
Sherman made his march on Atlanta, the enemy had burned 
every bridge on the railway for a distance of 150 miles ; and 
Sherman gave General M'CulIum eight days in which to recon- 
struct these bridges. One bridge was 1200 feet long and 97 feet 
high, and it was constructed in three days and a half (loud 
cheers) ; and every bridge in the course of that 1 50 miles was 
constructed in six days, and the whole supplies of Sherman's 
army were carried over that line." 

These remarks were received with cheers, loud cheers, show- 
ing that the good people of Bristol Avere not a little amazed at 
the statistics. 

Yes, our military operations have been the astonishment of 
European people and governments. We raised and kept in the 
field an army of more than a million of men, mostly by volunteer- 
ing, Avhile our agricultural, manufacturing, and all other indus- 
trial interests Avere prosecuted with unexampled activity and 
success. "We created from almost nothing, in less than four 
years, a navy that Great Britain, who calls herself the Mistress 
of the Seas, would hesitate to encounter. We brought forth, 
after repeated trials, commanders on the sea and on the land, — 
Farragut, Porter, Foote, Winslow, Grant, Sherman, Thomas, 
Meade, Howard, Sheridan, M'Pherson, and others scarcely their 
inferiors, — whose reputation for naval and miUtary ability and 
prowess will bear favorable comparison with that of Nelson, 



14 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK, 

Marlborough, Napoleon, Wellington, Ney, and other eminent 
commanders of the Old World. And, what is more to our credit, 
we held on to our purpose to put down the rebellion and destroy 
its cause, amidst disasters and trials, while every leading nation 
in Europe — Russia excepted — tried in all possible ways to 
hinder and discourage us, while they openly sympathized with 
and aided our enemies. A recent writer in Blackwood says : 
" It is no secret now that Lord Palmerston was ready to fight us 
on the Trent affair, with the French Emperor to back him up, 
and was prevented from so doing, not from any consideration 
of right or friendship to us, but by the pacific disposition of 
some of his leading associates in office." We have fought this 
rebellion down single-handed, against the sympathies, the one- 
sided neutrality, and the secret cooperation with rebels,, of Great 
Britain and France. We thus compel these nations, which 
respect nothing but power, to respect us. When, on the morn- 
ing of the 19th of June, 1864, the Kearsarge, under command of 
Capt. Winslow, sent the Alabama — a British-built, British- 
armed, and British-manned war-steamer, under the Confederate 
flag — to the bottom of the ocean, in sight of France watching 
from the fortifications of her great naval port to shout over a 
victory, these rival nations raised their military caps a little in 
token of respect ; and when Lee surrendered to Grant, and 
Johnston to Sherman, these nations completely uncovered their 
heads, and made profound obeisance. 

The manner in which our Government has borne itself since 
the suppression of the rebellion has tended greatly to secure for 
us the respect of mankind. There have been no mihtary execu- 
tions, but few imprisonments, and not the least vindictive feeling 
manifested towards those in the power of the Government who 
for four years exerted themselves to the utmost to insult our 
people and destroy the nation. There has been no sweeping 
confiscation of property, no revenge, no spirit of retaliation shown. 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 16 

Rebels are pardoned, and invited to reconstruct their States 
upon the new principles established by the result of the war. 
They have been treated with the greatest leniency and forbear- 
ance. Such an other example of self-restraint and magnanimity 
in the hour of victory is not to be foimd in the history of nations. 
Contrast it with the conduct of the British Government at Ja- 
maica, parallel in time. A shght emeute of a few thousand poor 
negi'oes, easily put down within a day or two, is followed by the 
military execution in cold blood of the leaders and two thousand 
of their miserable associates. What right have a people with 
such a record fresh in the minds of all men to whimper over the 
confinement in Fortress JNIouroe of Jefferson Davis, the head of 
the great Slaveholders' Rebellion, the cold-blooded murderer, by 
starvation, of helpless prisoners of war ? This dark background of 
English cruelty will serve to set off to greater advantage before the 
eyes of mankind, living and to live, the godlike clemency of our 
Government. The nations of the earth cannot fail to respect to 
the borders of reverence a people who have self-control and mag- 
nanimity enough to make a merciful use of victory, and such a 
consciousness of right and power as to extend the hand of broth- 
erly love to a prostrate foe. 

Again : We have secured such a position that we can afford 
to be just to all classes of citizens, and humane towards our i\;imer 
enemies. A weak government, tottering on its base, will, almost 
of necessity, be unfair, partial, unjust, and cruel. The Missouri 
Compromise grew out of the feehng among Northern statesmen 
that our Government was too feeble to bear the wrenching of a 
fierce struggle for the right. Up to the breaking out of the 
war we lived in the constant dread lest some disaster should over- 
take the ark of our strength. We have kept silence lest the 
breath of too loud talk about right should topple over the fair 
fabric reared by the trembling hands of our fathers. We have 
been like all other nations in this subserviency to conscious weak- 



16 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK, 

ness — no worse, certainly ; not much better, I fear. But this day 
of weakness has passed. We can do justly to all classes, black 
and white, with no dread of mysterious disaster. We can aflford 
to be humane also. The rebels of the South have done their 
utmost to destroy the Government : they have only made it ten 
times stronger than before. They have lost everything for which 
they fought and gave their sons to the bloody sacrifice ; separa- 
tion, independence, slavery, the supremacy of cotton, free trade, 
the pride of superiority in arms and statesmanship, property, — 
all gone. Think you there will ever be another Secession Con- 
vention ? I tell you nay ! Such a lesson is not forgotten in 
one generation. These rebels will be glad enough to remain, 
hereafter, peaceable citizens. The Government is strong enough 
to treat them humanely ; strong enough to give them pardon and 
citizenship on easy terms. It seems to me that the great mass 
should be pardoned, a few expatriated, and that but one — the 
head and representative of treason, Jefferson Davis — should be 
hung ; — not as Jefferson Davis, a rebel citizen cf Mississippi, but 
as the representative, the voluntary representative, the embodiment 
of treason against the United States Government ; not out of 
vengeance, but to show that treason is an atrocious crime, and to 
make treason i)dious, revolting, and infamous. Let us be merci- 
ful, pxuiishing only as God punishes, — to make sin appear " ex- 
ceeding sinful." 

Now, here are reasons enough, sufficiently momentous and 
grave, to call forth towards God the profoimdest gratitude of our 
hearts. For let us reverently remember, as we recount them, that 
we have secured these benefits, not by our wisdom or might, but 
by the good-will and providence of God, overruhng our affairs, 
guiding and aiding us in our terrible struggle. 

A few important things remain to be secured or settled, that we 
may, as a nation, gird ourselves up as a strong man to run a race. 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 17 

First. We must secure the constitutional abolition and pro- 
hibition of slavery forever in all the States and Territories of the 
United States of America. 

Secondly. It remains for us to secure to the freedmen their just 
rights as citizens. What these rights are, is a proper question for 
calm, thoughtful, and thorough discussion in the halls of Congress, 
in the newspaper press, in State legislatures, pulpits, town-meet- 
ings, and in private conversation. The attempt to force public 
opinion one way or the other by heated declamation, by factious 
action, or by an exaggerated representation of existing or appre- 
hended evils, is untimely, unseemly, and injurious to the truth 
and to sound judgment. There are, confessedly, difficulties con- 
nected with this question, which may lead wise and patriotic men 
to differ in opinion ; but an exhaustive discussion, temperately 
conducted, will bring us eventually to the right conclusion. I 
fear nothing but heat and haste. Might I venture an expression 
of opinion on this matter, I should say that, in the reconstruction 
of the rebelUous Slave States, the Government of the United 
States is bound to see to it that freedmen, or colored citizens, 
have secured to them^ by constitutional provision or legislative 
enactment, the same protection as to person and property that is 
accorded to white citizens. They should have the same hberty 
of movement — to buy and sell and make contracts, to engage in 
any pursuit or profession they may choose, to sue at law and be 
sued, to work or play — that the white man enjoys. There should 
be no code of laws for the black man exclusively. That would 
be making too much of the negro. That thing belongs to the 
days of slavery. Vagrant laws will doubtless be necessary at 
the South, as they are in Massachusetts ; but they should pay 
no respect to color. A white and black vagabond, thief, or 
drunkard should be amenable to the same statute. The colored 
man should be admitted to the witness-stand, and his testimony, 
as that of a white man, taken for what it is worth. His children 

3 



18 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

should have equal privileges in all public schools. As to the 
ballot, about which the contest will be warmest, it seems to me 
that certain resolutions introduced into the senate of Tennessee 
bj one of its members are not far out of the way. They pro- 
vide, first, that all colored men over twenty-one years of age, 
free before the war, who can read and write, shall, from their 
passage, possess the right of voting. Second, that all colored 
men over twenty-one years of age, slaves before the war, who 
have borne arms in the Union service, and can read and write, 
shall also, from their passage, possess the right of voting. And 
finally, all other colored men over twenty-one years of age, who 
can read and write, shall, after the year 1875 (I thuak) , possess 
the right of voting. Now, these resolutions offered in the senate 
of Tennessee are discriminating and just in the main. In Mas- 
sachusetts we prescribe, as conditions to exercising the elective 
franchise, that a man shall be twenty-one years of age, a resident 
for one year in the State, shall have paid a tax in the State, and 
shall be able to read intelligibly the Constitution, and write legi- 
bly his own name. These conditions we have found to be neces- 
sary safeguards to the ballot-box. I think they will be found 
equally necessary at the South. Perhaps it is too much to 
expect of the South to adopt the resolutions referred to. But, 
let the discussion go on in a spirit of charity, without taunt or 
reproach, and I have no fear but that, first or last, the intelhgent 
negroes will secure the ballot with the consent of their former 
masters. The Southern people are proud and prejudiced ; but 
they have no such instinctive dishke of the negro as Northern 
people very generally have. They are not fools, and they wiU 
learn in time that an intelligent man — one who feels his man- 
hood, one who feels that he has rights that a white man is bound 
to respect — is a better laborer, a better servant, adds more to 
the wealth of the State than an imbruted chattel who comes at 
the call of a master, whose liighest ambition is to do as little as 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 19 

possible and consume as much as possible while avoiding the 
lash of tlie overseer. For their own material and pohtical inter- 
ests they will, inthin less than twenty years, be desirous of rais- 
ing the negro to the highest condition of life of which he proves 
himself capable. 

Since writing the above, I have met with this from the mes- 
sage of Gov. Orr to the legislature of South Carolina: " Interest 
and humanity require us to treat him kindly, and to elevate him 
morally and intellectually. It will make him a better laborer, 
neighbor, and man. Suddenly relieved from the restraints of 
the servile condition in which he was bom and reared, his igno- 
rance can excite no surprise ; nor can we hope that he Avill 
eschew vice and crime. If he is to live in our midst, none are 
so deeply interested in enlightening and elevating him as our- 
selves." 

But there is a matter, affecting the future condition and wel- 
fare of the negro, of far more consequence to him and the nation 
than this of the ballot. He must be educated, intellectually, 
morally, and rehgiously, or he will become a greater curse to us, 
and more wretched, as a freeman, than he has ever been as a 
slave. If slavery is the terrible thing we believe it to be, then 
the people who have for generations been subject to its demoral- 
izing, degrading, unhumanizing influences, must be far down in 
the scale of intellectual and moral character. In the oppressed 
race there will doubtless be found not a few able and excellent 
men and women, — men and women in whose veins flows'some of 
the best blood of the South ; but it must be far otherwise with 
the mass of this four milUons of emancipated slaves. We must 
not delude ourselves with the notion that deliverance from slavery 
alone will essentially change their character. If we are inclined 
to this notion, let us study the effect of simple emancipation in 
Jamaica, where the negro freeman is far less of a man to-day 
than was the South Carolina slave at the beginning of the war. 



20 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAR, 

The simple truth is, that great, persistent, and self-sacrificing 
efforts must be put forth to bring this poor abused people up to 
the condition of average manhood in this country. Legislation 
cannot make men of them. The spelling-book and the Bible, 
the teacher and the preacher, must do this work ; and the North 
must furnish mainly the men and the means. 

With regard to this whole matter of reconstruction, we must 
exercise patience with the people of the South, black and white, 
and be content to lead them on gradually to adopt the wiser 
policy and truer principles of the North with regard to labor. 
If, for the coming twelve months, they shall make as rapid prog- 
ress toAvards what we think theoretically to be right, as they 
have made ostensibly for the past three months. New England — 
Connecticut at least — will have to take a step forward to keep 
rank with some of them. 

Our President, in the opening paragraph of his message, in 
speaking of the unprecedented weight of care throwTi upon him, 
says : " To fulfil ray trust I need the support and confidence of 
all who are associated with me in the various departments of 
government, and the support and confidence of the people." 
Shall he not have our support and confidence — the sympathy 
and confidence of all loyal people ? There can be no reasonable 
doubt in the mind of any candid man as to his patriotism, integ- 
rity, and honesty of purpose. His ability is unquestioned. His 
firmness has been thoroughly tested. He may not think or act 
as Mr. Sumner or Mr. Phillips or Mr. Douglass, or as you or I 
would have him, in every one of the many matters upon which 
he must act. What then ? Is he for this to be accounted as 
unworthy of trust ? Is he for this to be denounced, held up as 
a prospective traitor, threatened with infamy, have his speeches 
ridiculed and travestied, and his good name smeared with sus- 
picion ? Oh, shame on such despicable meanness ! Shame on 
such cowardly baseness ! Shall the man who stood up alone 



AND WHAT REMAINS TO BE SECURED. 21 

among Southern men in the senate-chamber at Washington, in 
the early days of secession, and denounced treason with fiery 
tongue ; who suffered confiscation of property and the loss of 
home ; who braved the bitter hatred of old friends and political 
associates ; who anathematized rebelhon in the very place where 
its altar-fires burned ; who exposed his Ufe hourly for months to 
the knife and bullet of the assassin ; who declared on the steps 
of the State-house of Tennessee, while the rebellion was still boast- 
ful, that every black man of the State should be free and equal 
under the law with the white man ; who solemnly pledged himself 
to the colored men at Nashville to be their " Moses, and lead them 
from the house of bondage ; " who, as President, demands of all 
inchoate Southern States the passage of the Constitutional 
Amendment, repudiation of the rebel war-debt, and legal pro- 
tection for the free Imen before they can present themselves at 
Washington, — shall this man, shall Andrew Johnson — when 
all is gained, when traitors are daily at his gate suing for pardon 
— turn traitor himself to his country, to his former princi- 
ples and life ? The question itself is almost impious. As well 
ask if God's sun will not to-morrow, instead of genial light and 
heat, emit miasma and pestilence. This practice of some, of 
showering anathemas and suspicion upon our public men the mo- 
ment they fail to come up to their ideas of the right, is exceed- 
ingly mischievous and excessively mean. Its effect is to create 
distrust in the minds of the people, and coldness between them 
and their rulers, when there should be mutual confidence and 
the freest interchange of feeling and sentiment. Let the people 
trust Andrew Johnson, — reason with him if need be, and pray 
for him, — and there is not the remotest danger of his proving 
recreant to any vital interest intrusted to his hands. . 

Another thing there is in this connection, not national, but 
local, which I cannot omit mentioning. It remains for us of 



22 WHAT WE HAVE SECURED BY THE WAK. 

Andover to erect some suitable memorial which shall perpetuate 
to future generations the remembrance of those from our town 
who sacrificed their lives to secure for us the benefits we now 
possess. This seems to me to be a duty we owe the noble dead, 
— a duty we owe those who shall come after us, — a duty we 
owe the. sacred sentiment of patriotism. 

Having had such recent rich experience of God's marked 
kindness towards us as a people, shall we not, with our grateful 
praises to-day, gather fresh confidence in his watchful care over 
our destiny for the future ? He has brought us safely through 
perils whose magnitude defied the skill of the Avisest statesmen to 
shun or surmount : shall we not have impUcit faith in his con- 
tinued wise management of our national afiairs, till, upon the 
broad basis of " equal rights and exact justice to all men," we 
shall, as a nation, become as harmonious as it is possible for a 
people to be occupying such a broad space on the map of the 
world ? Shall we not to-day comply with the request of our 
Chief Magistrate in the closing paragraph of his recent most ad- 
mirable and statesmanHke message to our National Congress, 
and join with him in the prayer that " the invisible Hand which 
has led us through the clouds that gloomed around our path, will 
so guide us onward to a perfect restoration of fraternal afiection, 
that we of this day may be able to transmit our great inheritance 
of State Governments in all their rights, of the General Govern- 
ment in its whole constitutional vigor, to our posterity, and they 
to theirs, through countless generations " ? 



